Marwaan Macan-Markar*

TRAT, Thailand, Feb 19 2010 (IPS) – Veena Panudej makes a living in the night like so many other women and men in this quiet eastern corner of Thailand. They work under the light of the stars in rubber estates spread beyond this city close to the Cambodian border.

Veena Panudej at her workplace Credit: Marwaan Macan-Markar/IPS

By sunrise, Veena takes stock of what she has finished in her nocturnal job, tapping rubber trees for the white sap that is collected in coconut shells attached to the slender trunks of each tree.

The 34-year-old was hardly disappointed on a recent Tuesday by a ritual that began shortly after midnight. The tools she used as she made her way in her family-owned plot of rubber trees were …

Charles Fromm

WASHINGTON, Mar 25 2010 (IPS) – The largest civil liberties group in the U.S. faulted President Barack Obama for signing an executive order on Wednesday that bans federal funds from being used for abortion procedures and revives funding for expired abstinence-only sex-education programming.
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) issued a statement on Tuesday, joining pro-choice groups in criticising Obama for including stipulations on abortion in his wide-ranging healthcare reform bill, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, which was signed into law this week.

Laura Murphy, director of the ACLU Washington Legislative Office, characterised the order as troubling , adding that providing health care to Americans should not come at the expense of limits on constitutionally protected access to abortion, and that the White House s hard fought bill came at a very high price for women s right to reproductive health care.

Though the meas…

Marcela Valente* – Tierramérica

BUENOS AIRES, Apr 28 2010 (IPS) – Fatal accidents at coalmines, like the recent tragedies in China and the United States, cause great public alarm. But U.S. physician Alan Lockwood warns that many more deaths are caused by the pollution that comes from the use of coal as an energy source.

Alan Lockwood Credit: Courtesy of Greenpeace

Backed by studies from the organisation Physicians for Social Responsibility (affiliated with the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War, 1985 Nobel Peace Prize winner), Lockwood asserts that coal causes heart and chronic respiratory diseases, strokes and cancer, which are among the five leading causes of death in the United States.

He and other experts published their conclusions last N…

Bhuwan Sharma

KATHMANDU, Jun 8 2010 (IPS) – With still five years left before the expiry of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) 2015 deadline to reduce under-five mortality rate by two-thirds from the 1990 level, a mid-term survey of Nepal Family Health Program (NFHP) II shows the country has already achieved the target.
The MDGs are eight time-bound goals focusing on poverty and its different dimensions that all United Nations member states and several international organisations must achieve by 2015. According to the (NFHP) II, the country s under-five mortality rate per 1,000 live births plummeted to 50 in 2009 from 162 in 1990, thus already meeting the 2015 target of bringing down the number to 54.

Funded by the United States Agency for International Development, the NFHP II is a family planning/maternal, neo-natal and child health project that was launched in December 2007 and will continue till September 2012. NFHP I ran from December 2001 to November 20…

Thalif Deen

UNITED NATIONS, Jul 8 2010 (IPS) – As the international community readies to commemorate World Population Day Sunday, the United Nations is reviewing the state of the world s women and how they stack up against the risks of maternal mortality and the lack of universal access to reproductive health.

A pregnant woman in Timor-Leste s national hospital, where UNFPA recently supplied child delivery equipment to reduce maternal mortality. Credit: UN Photo/Martine Perret

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon wants 2010 to be a …

Suleiman Mbatiah

NAIROBI, Jul 30 2010 (IPS) – A major pharmaceutical company in Kenya alleges that special trade measures to make medicines available in poor countries create loopholes for counterfeit medicines to enter the market a claim that health rights advocates refute.
Parallel importation of medicines creates loopholes for counterfeiters to bring counterfeit medicines into Kenya, alleged GlaxoSmithKline medical and regulatory affairs director in Kenya, Dr. William Mwatu, in an interview with IPS.

Mwatu said that unscrupulous profiteers use the legalisation of parallel importation of generic drugs to import counterfeits.

Kenya s Industrial Property Act of 2001 allows parallel importation under Section 58 (2). Parallel importation involves the legitimate importation of non-pirated goods without the permission of the rights holder. It is allowed under the World Trade Organisation s (WTO) Doha Declaration of 2001.

The main objective is to provid…

JOHANNESBURG, Aug 26 2010 (IPS) – Striking health workers have continued their work stoppage despite accusations that it endangers patients lives. They are part of a nationwide strike by public sector workers that has some observers concerned that rising wage demands could harm South Africa s economy.

Health workers say their wages disqualify them for social assistance, but are too low to make ends meet. Credit: Chris Stein/IPS

Beneath the grey monolithic exterior of Charlotte Maxeke Johannesburg Academic Hospital, a throng of red-shirted protesters kept up their vigil, dancing and singing to demand what they fee…

Marwaan Macan-Markar

BANGKOK, Sep 20 2010 (IPS) – Cambodia s partial success in reducing child mortality rates has exposed a fault line of inequity, one that underscores the advantage that the country s urban population has had over the rural poor.
Yet the South-east Asian kingdom, 35 percent of whose 14 million population live below the poverty line, is not alone in having this mixed record of reducing child mortality, say child rights experts.

Some of the other countries in the region reflect a similar trend 10 years after world leaders committed to meet a set of eight targets to help the world s poor by 2015. The fourth of the eight U.N. Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) seeks to achieve a two-thirds reduction in child mortality rates by 2015.

To be fair to governments in South-east Asia, child mortality rates are going down everywhere, said Ben Phillips, director of strategy at the Asia office of Save the Children, a British-based humanitarian organ…

Mohammed Omer

GAZA CITY, Oct 13 2010 (IPS) – Samir Tahseen Al-Nadeem died after waiting 35 days for an exit permit for treatment for his heart condition. He was 26. The medicines he needed could not get in. But the coffins do.

Goods waiting for months to be transferred to the Gaza Strip at the Israeli-controlled Karni crossing. Credit: Mohammed Omer

The health ministry now lists 375 deaths due to shortage of life-saving medicines. The medicines sit just outside the borders of the territory until most pass their expiry dates. But there are no expiry dates on about 10,000 coffins that have been donated for Gaza. The coff…